The Bears rebounded from a tough Week 1 loss in Green Bay by winning their next three games. It's a blueprint that coach Matt Nagy hopes to follow after Sunday's overtime defeat in Miami.
"I expect our guys to handle it great," Nagy said Monday at Halas Hall. "The one thing that you realize and [general manager] Ryan [Pace] has done such a great job at is bringing in quality human beings, good people. I've said it from the start: When you go through tough losses, bad teams start pointing the finger. Losing teams start pointing the finger. We don't have any of that because we've got good people, good players, good coaches.
"This is not a 'Debbie Downer' organization. We're a winning team. We lost that game, life goes on. How're we going to get better?"
That was evident in the Bears locker room following their loss to the Dolphins. The players who spoke to the media generally discussed how they could improve individually.
"There were things that I could have done," said right guard Kyle Long, "missed opportunities in pass protection, in the run game, things that could have sprung our backs or given Mitch [Trubisky] a little bit more time. I'm sure every guy in this locker room will say the same thing about themselves. That's the nature of this team. That's why we've had such success early on."
"When stuff goes wrong, I'm big on what could I have done better," added safety Adrian Amos Jr.. "I feel like I missed one or two tackles or maybe three tackles that I should have made. That's what I look at; I'm not going to say what anybody else did."
Other players took full responsibility for their mistakes.
"I took my team out of position to win the game late in the ballgame," running back Tarik Cohen said after losing a fumble at his own 45 with 1:52 left in the fourth quarter and the game tied 28-28. "Personally, that's frustrating for me. I'm very self-critical of myself."
After throwing an interception in the end zone with the Bears leading 21-13 early in the final period, Trubisky said: "I forced it and I put my team in a bad position, and I shouldn't have thrown that pass."
With that type of mindset in the locker room, Nagy is confident that the Bears will ultimately benefit from Sunday's difficult overtime loss, both by learning from their mistakes and utilizing the defeat as motivation moving forward.
"I'm not making any promises, but I will say, I have no concern at all that our team is going to gel and get even stronger," Nagy said. "Down the road, with the Packers and now this game, we use it the right way. I think that's a credit to our players and who they are. I saw that [Sunday] night on the plane. They feel it, they're hurt, but they'll use it as fuel for getting better."
